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The 3 Coaching Questions

As Sales Managers, you need to find ways to keep your job / role simple and focused. It’s easy to get distracted by operational things and to pay attention to business that is ALREADY IN the system rather than your primary role, which is to PUT business in the system…and your salespeople and designers are the vehicle for doing that. Your role is to support, direct and redirect their behavior and performance to sell or schedule each and every opportunity…and to evaluate at the end of an opportunity what happened and what didn’t happen. To keep the coaching discussion focused on actions and results, I have made it simple for you. Ask:

1. “Did you Sell it or Schedule it?”

Either one or the other result needs to happen.

Possible responses:

“Yes.” They produced a sale or scheduled an appointment. Either can be briefly discussed now as to how they did that so that they can repeat that action or skill.

“No.” You can let that response sit as a complete sentence or your can ask: “May I ask you a couple of questions about that?” If they say “No” again, ask “Can we rev
iew this a little later then?” If they say “No” again, you will need to start having ANOTHER kind of conversation about coaching – the process and the relationship. If they say “Yes” proceed to Coaching Question #2.

“I tried to…..”. Ask “May I ask you a couple of questions about that?” and they say “Yes”, proceed to Coaching Question #2.

2. “How did your customer/client ANSWER the BADAS Questions?”

Notice that the question is not if THEY ASKED the BADAS Questions…but HOW the customer answered them. You will need to KNOW these questions and the subsequent questions that support each one in order to help. If they got ‘non-answers’ such as “As little as possible” to the Budget question, then you’ll need to dig deeper to find out what they did with that discussion from there. We want them to get ANSWERS that they can use to determine if this is a sale today or an appointment – the ONLY reason we ask the 5 Key Area Questions – aka BADAD Questions.

Go through EACH of the BADAS Questions…or better yet, have THEM to through them so that you can see if they missed any or don’t know them.

3. “How did you ASK for a COMMITMENT?”

The commitment can be a Sale or an Appointment, so how did they direct the customer/client to do that?

If they were going toward an appointment, did they use Seivert’s Six Step Strategy to Secure Appointments? Again, YOU need to know each of these steps and what they are meant to accomplish. If they didn’t use them, discuss why not. Do they know them? Did they use a couple but not all? DIG.

If they asked for the sale, what happened? Was there pushback? Was there an objection they were unable to overcome? What got in the way?

Clearly, you can see that the salespersons/designers role is to direct the sales conversation with questions, and your role is to do the same. Coaching isn’t TELLING them what to do, it’s helping them to DISCOVER the solution by asking questions, and knowing what you need to know so that you can ask questions that will find that out.

If you get stuck on any of this, CALL ME. This is a big job and your sales team will always need your help to consistently produce results. If you help them to do that, you will have a job for as long as you want one!

Get a free 15 minute business consultation!

"Just got off a call with @JodySeivert! She's one to chat w/ if you are serious abt growing your design biz! #FullSteamAhead"

"Your free 15 minute coaching session is a golden nugget that any designer would be remiss if they allowed the opportunity to pass them by. I genuinely appreciate your attention to my business conundrum and your validation to what I was also doing right! I will return soon as a paying customer in the near future!"

*If you need a second set of eyes or ears on your business or your sales process, please drop me an email or pick up the phone and call me. We can accomplish a lot in a small slice of time! -Jody

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